Aulo Gelli

Rethinking school feeding social safety nets, child development, and the education sector

This review highlights three main findings. First, school feeding programs in low-income countries exhibit large variation in cost, with concomitant opportunities for cost containment. Second, as countries get richer, school feeding costs become a much smaller proportion of the investment in education. For example, in Zambia the cost of school feeding is about 50 percent of annual per capita costs for primary education; in Ireland it is only 10 percent. Further analysis is required to define these relationships, but supporting countries to maintain an investment in school feeding through this transition may emerge as a key role for development partners. Third, the main preconditions for the transition to sustainable national programs are mainstreaming school feeding in national policies and plans, especially education sector plans; identifying national sources of financing; and expanding national implementation capacity. Mainstreaming a development policy for school feeding into national education sector plans offers the added advantage of aligning support for school feeding with the processes already established to harmonize development partner support for the education for all-fast track initiative.

Value Chains and Nutrition: A Framework to Support the Identification, Design, and Evaluation of Interventions

In this paper we explore how a value chain framework can inform the design of interventions for achieving improved nutrition. Conceptually, there are three main channels for value chains to improve nutrition: (1) through increased consumption of nutritious foods (a demand side pathway); or (2) through increased incomes from value chain transactions (a supply side pathway) or (3) through increased nutrition value-addition in the chain transactions. These three pathways are interlinked and involve complex dynamics that are not straightforward to understand.

School feeding: Outcomes and costs

Background School-feeding programs are popular development assistance programs in developing countries but have previously had few sound, empirical analyses of their effectiveness and costs. Objective The goals of this study were to provide a realistic estimate of the costs of school feeding and combine these estimates with outcome information to obtain the cost per outcome. Methods Cost studies were conducted in three African countries by reviewing school-feeding costs provided by the World Food Programme and interviewing stakeholders in ministries of education and in the community. In another African country, existing costing information was used. To compare across the countries, costs were standardized for a 200-day school year, a 700-kcal per day ration, and when children were not fed. To obtain cost per outcome data, outcomes were obtained from a review of school-feeding studies. Results The cost of school feeding ranged from US

The costs and cost-efficiency of providing food through schools in areas of high food insecurity.

28 to US

New Benchmarks for Costs and Cost-Efficiency of School-Based Feeding Programs in Food-Insecure Areas

63 per child per year (weighted mean cost of US

Investment in child and adolescent health and development: key messages from Disease Control Priorities, 3rd Edition

40 per child per year). The cost for an extra day of attendance was less than US

School Feeding Programs in Middle Childhood and Adolescence

10 per student, while the cost per extra kilogram of weight ranged from US

Are school feeding programs in low-income settings sustainable? Insights on the costs of school feeding compared with investments in primary education.

38 to US

School feeding, moving from practice to policy: reflections on building sustainable monitoring and evaluation systems.

252. Costs for cognitive outcomes were similarly variable. Conclusions This analysis estimates a higher average cost but a narrower range of costs when compared with previous estimates, reflecting the greater precision of the current analyses. The cost per outcome was high, but this analysis does not capture the full range of outcomes (e. g., social protection, educational achievement) potentially derived from school feeding.

On the Transition to Sustainability: An Analysis of the Costs of School Feeding Compared with the Costs of Primary Education

Background The provision of food in and through schools has been used to support the education, health, and nutrition of school-aged children. The monitoring of financial inputs into school health and nutrition programs is critical for a number of reasons, including accountability, transparency, and equity. Furthermore, there is a gap in the evidence on the costs, cost-efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of providing food through schools, particularly in areas of high food insecurity. Objective To estimate the programmatic costs and cost-efficiency associated with providing food through schools in food-insecure, developing-country contexts, by analyzing global project data from the World Food Programme (WFP). Methods Project data, including expenditures and number of schoolchildren covered, were collected through project reports and validated through WFP Country Office records. Yearly project costs per schoolchild were standardized over a set number of feeding days and the amount of energy provided by the average ration. Output metrics, such as tonnage, calories, and micronutrient content, were used to assess the cost-efficiency of the different delivery mechanisms. Results The average yearly expenditure per child, standardized over a 200-day on-site feeding period and an average ration, excluding school-level costs, was US